Unknown Location, Iraq – April 2004

Elizabeth is starving. She thinks they are trying to starve her to death. She is becoming delusional. The thoughts running through her head are starting to frighten her. They are getting darker and darker. Last night she dreamed of eating a raw rat. If only she could catch one. They had been giving her food. Well, they had been giving her rice. Just white rice. Not much of it. Not much at all. It is being deliberately kept to the bare minimum to keep her alive. But at least it was food.

They haven't fed her in ten days. She knows it's been ten days. She is counting them off. She learned quickly that she could keep track of time based on their interrogation schedule if she opened the word interrogation to include physical torture and waterboarding. Although, she guesses she's sanctioned that too. There might even be a small sliver of her that feels she deserves this, but then her arm throbs, her cigarette burns sting, or she coughs up water, and she knows she doesn't. No one does. She knows that once she gets out of this place, she will march to the President's office to tell him how unbearable and painful "enhanced interrogation" is. It is torture. She tries not to think too hard about the fact that she is being tortured. She knows this. She is not an idiot. She knows the facts. But she doesn't want to think about it too hard. She does not want to face it. She doesn't want to acknowledge it. That needs to wait until she gets home.

Home. Home to Henry and her kids. She spends a lot of time thinking about them. She misses them more than her heart will truly allow her. If she were to feel the real gravity of the weight their absence lays on her, she'd be crushed to death. She thinks about Henry. Her Henry. She knows he has to be out of his mind with worry for her. She knows he's probably trying everything he can to get to her. She pictures him yelling in Conrad's office, begging him to bring her home. She imagines him holding their children as he promises them he won't let her rot away over here. She pictures him pleading with the President, demanding they negotiate for her release. He is probably frantic. He is perhaps so desperate. And it makes her so mad that she can't get to him and tell him she loves him. That he can't hold her and kiss her new scars. It kills her that she still isn't in a place where she can truly process what is happening to her daily.

She's pulled from her thoughts of a rescue at the sound of footsteps—the light ones. The steps belong to the second man, who has yet to give her his name. He is the hands-off one. Sayyid is a big man with heavy steps. He loves to do the other man's dirty work. She knows it is the other man that's in charge. The one who is walking into the room now. He's holding a platter of food that makes her mouth water. Her dehydrated body is ecstatic at the thought of eating everything on it.

"Smells good, doesn't it?" he asks, placing the tray just out of her reach. She involuntarily pulls on the chain, keeping her in place, and he lets out a little laugh. "Hungry?"

"Yes," Elizabeth whispers, her eyes on the plate.

"I thought you might be." He is still smiling, but she can see his eyes. There is something in them. He is watching her closely as though he is waiting for something. There is something about him that terrifies her. With Sayyid, she always knows what she's going to get. But the only read she's ever gotten on this one is that he is an unpredictable sociopath. And right now, he's playing some game. She can see it in his eyes. So she stays silent, trying to figure out what this could be. He waits for a few beats and then begins.

"I will give you some, but you must do something for me." He says, and Elizabeth begins to shake her head no vigorously. She's been in this room for months but managed to avoid that. There have been threats, none of them veiled. But neither the man nor Sayyid have remotely acted on them. They seem content to starve and torture her until she breaks. It's what they are waiting for. This has to be some new kind of tactic. Some new way to get to her. And she has no intention of letting it work.

"No." Her voice is just as strong as she'd hoped it be. She is starving, but she will not allow herself to do this. She has to show them she's not going to be broken. That she is stronger than they think she is.

"Okay," He says as he picks the platter back up. "You're not ready. I'm going to take this and leave you be."

As Elizabeth watches him turn toward the door. Her brain sends a pin signal in desperation to her stomach. And one word enters her mind. Survival. She has to survive. She is a wife and a mother, and she has to fight to stay alive long enough to get out of here.

"I'll do it. I'll give you what you want." Her voice is quiet. Her cheeks burn in shame. Although, part of her already knows this won't be her shame to carry. It will belong to him, whoever he is. But yet, she can't help how her stomach churns at the thought of being touched by him. He turns around slowly, and his eyes are colder than she could have imagined. The platter is still in his hands. He's holding it like a shield. And there is a look in his eyes that makes her entire body want to shrink away. He looks at her like she is a prize to be won or a piece of meat he gets to use for his enjoyment. But worse than that, he seems to enjoy the pain he inflicts on her. The physical but mostly the mental and emotional. And as she thinks this, she realizes there is nothing she can do about it. She is a prisoner, and he is a monster. And it seems he is going to take pleasure in breaking her.

She doesn't want to give him that satisfaction. She will not let him see her break. So she clenches her fists and picks a spot on the ceiling to stare at. And she swallows the lump in her throat and tries to stop the trembling in her body.

He stands there, staring at her for several minutes as if waiting for her to look at him. She doesn't. And then he starts moving toward her. She has a second to turn her head and close her eyes. He is heavier than she thought he would be. He weighs down on her with such force. And as his lips hit her ear, she couldn't stop the involuntary reaction in her body. She jerks back from him, her body curling in on itself, and screams.

"No!" she shouts, "Please, no." She screams again. She knows what this is. She knows what's happening. But she's frozen. She can't move. She can't do anything to stop it.

It goes on for a long time. Or maybe, it feels like a long time. She doesn't know. She tried not to think about it. She tried to think about her family. The people she is desperate to get home to. She tried to think of the sun's warmth while she hiked in the blue ridge mountains with Henry. She tried to think about her favorite song and her favorite childhood memory. But the man wouldn't stop ensuring she was in the moment with him. He did his best to inflict the most pain he possibly could. She screamed and sobbed. She acquired new painful scars and maybe a broken rib. And she lies there on the bare floor with her knees pulled to her chest.

It isn't until he is dressed again that he speaks. "I'll let you keep the ring, but know he'll never want you again, sunshine."

She feels the band on her hand that has never left her finger since Henry put it on her in the DC courthouse. She wonders for a moment if the man is right. Is she too broken now for Henry ever to want her again? And as she looks at the ring that has been a symbol of love and support throughout most of her adult life. She decides she is more pissed off than broken.

"Go fuck yourself." She spits at him and waits for him to kick or hit her. But he doesn't. He laughs and walks out of the room, closing and locking the door behind him. But he did leave the food like he said he would. She stares at it. She could be stronger. She could wait longer. But she's so hungry and tired and sore. And she has to eat. She has to survive. Humans are animals with instincts, although thoughts can override them. Her thoughts don't win this one, in any case.

She lifts herself from the ground, her body protesting every movement. And she eats. She eats everything on that plate. She has to force herself to slow down. She has to be careful to chew so she doesn't choke. She can't allow herself to starve to death. Because then they will win. And she refuses to let them.

Washington, DC – April 2004

Henry expects walking into the room to feel clinical. On TV or in the movies, meetings like this are always in some dark and dingy church basement. He never thought he would join a grief group. But yesterday, he hit his limit on knowing how to deal with Elizabeth's death alone. Stevie had yelled at him. She finally hit her little breaking point of missing her mother. He had made a dinner she didn't like, and she told him that she hated him. She had told him she wished he had died instead of her mom. Realistically Henry knows that was a normal grief reaction from his daughter. But her words cut through him, and he reacted poorly. He yelled back at her. He told her he wished he had been the one that died too. He told his daughter, who is too young to understand her big feelings, that he hated Elizabeth for leaving them. So when one of his coworkers, a middle-aged woman who'd lost her daughter last year, said she knew about a support group, he'd jumped at the chance to do something different. Because he's sure, his little girl will never forgive him for saying he hated Elizabeth. Because she doesn't yet understand how much you have to love someone to be that angry at them for doing something like dying. Because he feels like he's not alive himself. And because he has no clue what the fuck to do now.

He has spent a lot of time thinking about the people he has lost in his life. Tommy- his childhood best friend- was the first person he knew who died. Henry had watched him die. He had watched the ice break under his friend. He remembers waiting for his head to pop back up. But it didn't. Tommy was gone. Henry had nightmares about that day well into adulthood. His parents didn't ever check in with him about that day. It was before people knew how many possible ways someone can get traumatized. Henry didn't think his grief was trauma related until his grandmother died. He and Elizabeth were dating already when that happened. Elizabeth had held him while he cried. Elizabeth had been there to help him navigate all of his feelings. She was his rock. Now she's gone. Henry has no idea how to navigate his grief for her.

He has never felt so empty. He doesn't know how to find anything inside of himself. He spends every day in a trance of fatherhood. He has three kids that need to be taken care of. So he's done that and only that. If Elizabeth were alive, she would've reminded him he needed to fill his cup too. But he let it run dry. He can't sleep in his big and cold bed. But he can barely get out of it every morning too. Henry loves being a father. His kids are the only reason he is still going. They are his whole world, and he cannot disappoint them. But he's tired of feeling so broken. He needs to learn how to start living again. He knows Elizabeth would want him to.

The grief group leader is a sweet older woman named Alice. She has a calming voice that is just what he needs to be in this moment. She asks the group to go around the room and share why they came.

"My name is Henry... Um, I lost my wife, Elizabeth, in February." Henry starts slow and quiet. He feels awkward talking about his loss out loud like this.

"Welcome, Henry. We're so glad to have you here today." Alice speaks softly.

Henry doesn't share more than that first sentence. He sits and listens as other people freely express their thoughts and feelings about their losses. A young man named Carlos has lost his parents in the last year. His parents died in an accident. Henry can't help but think of Elizabeth. Elizabeth, before he ever met her, at fifteen, navigating the loss of her parents. He has to wipe away a tear. He still cries when he thinks of her more often than he doesn't. He knows that the tears will turn into smiles and maybe laughs with time. But that day is not today. Most of him believes that day will never come.

"I just feel so lost. I don't know how to find my way. I want to find something or someone. Anything." Another widow in the group says. Henry relates to that. He knows that if he didn't have children to care for, he would be serially dating right now. It would be easy to find anything to bury this pain under. He knows it's more common for men to date soon after spousal death than women. He doesn't know why that is true. He just knows it is. He thinks maybe, like him, most don't know how to handle the pain.

"That is completely normal, Greg," Alice speaks softly again. Henry appreciates her understanding. "The loss can be overwhelming, especially if it is unexpected." She continues. "Sometimes it can feel like the grief will never end. And to be blunt, it won't. But you will grow around it. And you will not feel like this forever. This is just one chapter of your life. Your story is not over. Remember that." She has a warm smile on her face. Her words fill Henry with hope. He'll be okay, just like he promised Elizabeth he would be.